


There will be an answer

by Hokuto



Category: Pluto (Manga)
Genre: Chromatic Source, Gen, Music, Pre-Canon, Robots, Songfic, War, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>North No. 2, in the war and after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There will be an answer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jan/gifts).



> I love North, and well - you did mention him off-handedly in your prompt... Happy Yuletide, I hope you enjoy!

There's music in human wars, or at least there was. He knows because he was programmed to know everything there is to know about war, so he knows the beat of drums, brassy bugle-calls, thin voices of fifes and bagpipes, the drums, the resonant horn sounding, the drums again and again beating the rhythm of the march: counterpoints of battles long in the past, in his databanks ready to hand.

  
gonna lay down my sword and shield

Robots are their own metronomes. No need for drum corps and bugle boys; the coordination that matters comes through radio-waves and circuits activating with the single flip of a switch. North No. 2 doesn't even need that. He was designed and built for battle, and its timing is his timing.

  
gonna stick my sword in the golden sand

Robot wars are still far from silent. Metal and plastic creak, zing, hum, shatter, explode, crack, sizzle, snap and pop, clash and echo. This is North's music and he is its best conductor.

  
down by the riverside

Robots do not scream, but their parts do, shredding under North's swords and guns. There are always more to fight. Darius's factories run non-stop, building more instruments for North to play.

  
I ain't gonna study war no more

General Douglas calls him away from the war for a meeting, and when he has cleared the current battlefield so that he can leave, North hears silence for the first time. Only a brief silence; from a broken radio in the piles of robots he hears music threaded with static, music without bugles, drums, fifes, horns, or bagpipes, music of an age struggling for peace.

  
ain't gonna study war no more

He doesn't understand it.

  
gonna study war no more

* * *

  
When the war ends it does not end. In North's databanks the war is on repeat, and its music (his music) plays on and on and on. He has nothing to replace it with. He is a war machine and all of his memories are war.

  
and when the night is cloudy

He does not hate the endless noise, nor does he miss its physical presence. He feels nothing for it, because he does not feel (there is no room in his design for Montblanc's sentiment or Heracles's hatred), but it occurs to him that he would like to hear something different.

  
there is still a light that shines on me

He remembers the music on the radio; he puts on a cloak to cover his weapons and goes among humans to hunt for it, or something like it. It's not an easy hunt. Humans are noisy, and there is more music than he ever knew there could be, in radios and computers and discs and clubs and concert halls. North questions humans as he once questioned Persian robots: What music do they listen to? When? What is the source? What instruments are used? Who plays them? Where do they find new sources of music? Who writes it? How much is produced? What is the cost?

shine until tomorrow

In a subway he meets a man playing an old acoustic guitar, humming _guta lala_ under his breath, and asks him why he is inspired to play. "Music changes the world," the man says, utterly serious. "Didn't anyone program that into your banks? Haven't you heard the Beatles? Any good rock? It revolutionizes the world, man!" And he wanders away with his guitar, singing "Hey, Jude, don't make it bad - take a sad song and make it better..."

  
let it be

North does not have sufficient information to categorize a "sad song." It seems logical to him that viewing images in motion with associated music would allow him to understand the emotional dimensions more thoroughly, and so he finds a robot theater and watches a movie. The antiquated science of the story baffles him and the characterization of the AI is, by modern robopsychology standards, nonsensical, but the soundtrack is beyond reproach: light when the movie is playful, low when the story is dark, silent where it should be silent.

  
I wake up to the sound of music

He upgraded his protocol programming after the war, and so it is only after the movie is over and he has left the theater that he says, "Oh," because it would be impolite to have spoken during the movie but _oh_ , he mouths the sound silently, _oh._

  
Mother Mary comes to me

When he recharges for the night the war plays again as it always plays, but North No. 2 can no longer bear it; the screeching of torn metal is an awful sound, terrible and ugly, and the war now brings from him a sound he never made in any battle, a sound that is almost tears.

  
speaking words of wisdom

In the morning he leaves the robot barracks he's been occupying and leaves no forwarding address. The war still runs along his circuits, a music that will never leave him, but no more deaths will add to it.

  
let it be

He has a new music to learn.

  


let it be

  



End file.
